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- EDD K. USMAN | Twitter: @edd1819 | Instagram: @bluestar0910 | Facebook: SDN — SciTech & Digital News
COTABATO CITY, March 26, 2024 (SDN) — A generally peaceful environment has reigned in Central Mindanao since 2014. That was 10 years ago.
That year on March 27 the Government of the Philippines (GPH) and the then separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) signed in Manila the landmark, war-busting Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB). It came after 17 years of protracted peace negotiations marked by major fighting, as well as skirmishes — government forces against MILF combatants.
Negotiations between the two parties, which had then been engaged in an internecine conflict, Filipino against Filipino, started informally in January 1997 in Cagayan de Oro City, Southern Philippines, during the administration of President Fidel V. Ramos.
Principals in the informal talks pitted Ramos’ executive secretary in 1995-1998, Ruben D. Torres, a former student activist, and the MILF vice chairman for Political Affairs, Ghadzali Jaafar.
Their meeting came just four months after the signing of the Final Peace Agreement (FPA) forged between GPH and the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF). The Ramos administration did not waste time after the FPA signing on September 6, 1996, after four years of negotiations in Indonesia, and got the MILF headed by its founder, Chairman Salamat Hashim, into the negotiating table.
As they say, the rest is history.
So, on Wednesday the Bangsamoro government, the MILF, many Mindanao-based civil society organizations (CSOs), and the BARMM population will celebrate the CAB’s decade-long milestone, with guests from the national government in Manila and the GPH-MILF’s international peace partners.
Chief of the guests from Manila, predictably, would be Peace, Reconciliation and Unity Secretary Carlito G. Galvez, Jr., who can be aptly described as “friend of peace, friend of the Bangsamoro people” for his constancy of support for the peace process in Mindanao.
The negotiations with the MILF that Ramos lit 27 years ago sustained its fire for many years, though punctuated by major wars and skirmishes, finally leading to the signing of the CAB after 17 years.
MILF Chief Negotiator Mohagher M. Iqbal has on many occasions told his fellow Bangsamoro that the BARMM created through the Bangsamoro Organic Law (BOL) in January 2019 “is a product of the blood, sweat, and tears” of your father, brother, and uncle who fought and laid down their lives for the right to self-determination and the opportunity to live a life like their fellow non-Muslim countrymen.
Looking back, Iqbal, who wears many hats in the peace process, recalled some of the most challenging period in the GPH-MILF negotiations. There was a stage of the negotiation that he, a long-time veteran of the peace talks, could not control his emotion.
In an interview with select journalists in his office at the Ministry of Basic, Higher and Technical Education (MBHTE) here at the Bangsamoro Government Center (BGC), he said there was a particular instance when his tears fell because of uncontrolled and pent-up emotion after overcoming a particularly difficult hurdle in the negotiation.
“They call it the ‘defining moment’ of the peace process,” Iqbal, chairman of the MILF Peace Implementing Panel, recalled. He added it was the time when the two parties signed the Framework Agreement on the Bangsamoro (FAB) on October 15, 2012.
Bangsamoro peace process comes full circle
He said only he and Leonen were forging the FAB which they finished only at 4’o clock in the morning.
“The facilitator (Malaysia) let the two of us continue undisturbed. Leonen was reporting directly to his principal (Aquino III) and I to my principal (MILF Central Committee) in every stage of the FAB.
“After the agreement was fleshed out, meaning we already agreed, my tears fell. that’s the hard part. Other aspects was difficult, too, but the FAB was the most intense,” said Iqbal. “No part of the negotiations was easy.”
He said the ill-fated Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD) was in the negotiating table for three years and eight months, but he did not feel any strain. But the FAB which he and Leonen completed and agreed on overnight was a strain too much.
What happened, Iqbal said, was a critical problem arose, how to identify the solution to the Bangsamoro Question. “That’s what we discussed with GPH,” he added.
Before the FAB, which Iqbal described as truly important, GPH and MILF panels forged an Agreement on Intent (AI), followed by the Tripoli Agreement of 2001.
The MILF Information Committee chairman, said the CAB has given peace to the Bangsamoro, as well as socio-economic opportunities, the exercise of their right to self-determination to certain extent, and affected all the aspects of human existence.
“In negotiations,” Iqbal said, “you cannot force your counterpart. If you do, then you go to war. Agreement is a compromise.”
The MILF officer said there are still aspects of the CAB which still have to be implemented. “But we are moving forward.”
Iqbal said the MILF believes in the sincerity of President Marcos and his wisdom in fully implementing the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro.
He said the Bangsamoro peace process has come full circle. From then President Ferdinand E. Marcos, Sr. to President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. From father to son.
The elder Marcos had the signing of the 1976 Tripoli Agreement during his administration, and now the young Marcos has in his hands the full implementation of the Bangsamoro peace agreements. (/)